July 17, 2007

Bush paid a surprise visit to a gathering of GOP congressional staffers and White House aides trying to determine an effective strategy for communications about war policies.

Why am I not surprised that they met to talk about their propaganda strategy and not their foreign policy strategy? This is confirmed by the following:

One participant said the president told the staffers he would not rethink his Iraq policies until after a critical military assessment in September.

That's right, Bush isn't even going to think about policy strategies until September.

We're told, however, that his Joint Chiefs of Staff are thinking about options come September: More troops or the same level of troops.

It's only a matter of time until troops are scaled back and the US shifts to using more "air support." In fact, the later is already happening.

The escalation worries some about an increase in “collateral damage,” casualties among Iraqi civilians. [2]

As US troops withdraw, increased air power is almost inevitable. We have the experience of the Vietnam timeline to draw on.

The US peace movement has to sharpen its message and demand that such bombings not occur. In addition, we need to expose the giant military bases in Iraq and demand that they are closed; we don't simply want the Democrat's Republican-lite troop redeployment.

So, what's the Peace Movement's strategy for September 2007? A better question is, what's the August strategy?